


Distorted Mirrors

by llwydion



Series: a peek into alternate timelines (sw do-overs) [6]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, For the most part, a wild emotional rollercoaster, as in the characters who died in canon still die here, canonical character deaths, snippets of other AUs, typical skywalker-kenobi-jinn levels of drama, warning: dysfunctional family dynamics ahead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-04-08 07:23:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14100306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/llwydion/pseuds/llwydion
Summary: Each of our choices leads to a different possibility, a different universe. History is like a thousand mirrors - each retelling gives you a slightly different tale.





	Distorted Mirrors

History is like a thousand mirrors – each retelling gives you a slightly different tale.

In one tale, a child of the desert becomes a Jedi, is lured by the power and promises of the Dark Side, and Falls. He destroys his daughter’s people and his son’s family, but his daughter is strong and courageous and his son is bright and compassionate and in the end, he realizes the error of his ways and renounces his allegiance. He returns to the Light in the last moments of his life, and his legend lives on in the galaxy as one of caution and freedom, of terror and salvation.

This is not that tale, the one we all know. These are the others.

* * *

 

  1. **Obi-wan doesn’t go to Naboo**



Obi-wan Kenobi has had a terrible day. First, his master goes off on some important errand once more since the Council has been strongly urging him to do it for the past six months (he’s gotten _a hundred and twenty_ comm messages in the past six hours because his master decided that the best thing to do was ignore the Council, which one does not do because the Council has unrestricted access to all commlinks and Mace Windu is deadly at setting up automatic repeating messages that are sent out without fail every three minutes), then he nearly trips over Master Yoda in his haste to get to the docking bay (it’s not _his_ fault that the Grandmaster of the Order is small and wizened and about a third of the normal human height), then he accidentally brings a cup of water into the Archives (and Master Nu is very justified in dragging him out by the ear), and finally his master’s transport took off without him (his master is apologetic about it, but that damn twinkle in his eyes means that nope, he’s set this up so that Obi-wan wouldn’t get on that transport).

In short: he’s been left behind on Coruscant, and nothing has gone right today.

The Council summons him less than a day later. When he arrives, Master Windu is resting his head in his hands, Master Billaba is wiping her eyes, and Master Yoda is staring straight at him, unblinkingly.

“What is the matter, Councilors?”

“Your master, young Padawan, is dead.”

Shock reverberates through him. Qui-Gon Jinn is one of the best duelists in the Order, and the only two who have beat him in recent history are Master Windu and himself. He saw his master a day ago, in their shared quarters, while he complained about the influx of messages on his commlink.

His master was with them, a day ago.

He can’t deal with this emotionally right now. He bundles it all up and throws it to the Force, and what he can’t scrape out he boxes away tightly in a dark corner of his mind.

 _There is no emotion, there is peace_.

But Qui-Gon Jinn is dead, and there is no peace.

“How?”

Master Yoda’s ears droop. “The Sith, they have returned.”

Years later, as he is fighting with his men on Utapau, he wonders if things would have gone differently had he gone with his master that one fateful day.

Then blaster fire, intense pain, and the name of Obi-wan Kenobi becomes nothing more than another legend whispered of behind closed doors and fallen temples.

* * *

 

  1. **Anakin left the Jedi during the war**



He sees Obi-wan a few times after they part amicably. Once in the Senate Dome as he strides along behind Bail Organa. Once in Dex’s, where he and Padme are enjoying their one-year-and-five-month anniversary and Obi-wan and Master Windu are discussing politics of some sort (or Force philosophy, or training of the younglings, some Council Stuff that he technically Isn’t Supposed to Know). A few times in the Temple, as he is one of the few outsiders allowed in.

It’s not that they dissolved the training bond, or that they can’t speak anymore on friendly terms.

It’s just unbearably awkward, because Obi-wan (apparently) had known for a long time (“look, Anakin, even _Master Yoda_ knew, we were just waiting for you to realize it”) and hasn’t. Said. Anything.

(Because how in the Force do you admit to your teacher that you were having an illicit relationship, only to find out that everyone knew and was just waiting for him to leave? See, awkward.)

But as usual, someone tries to assassinate a senator, and people are screaming and shouting, and Obi-wan is in the thick of it all when a stray blaster shot catches him in the shoulder. He’s bleeding a decent amount, but there’s no time for him to stop waving his lightsaber around, when all of a sudden someone else stuns the man right in the forehead.

When he turns around to look, there’s his old Padawan, holding a blaster in one hand and lifting a few pairs of handcuffs in the other.

“Hi, Obi-wan. Long time no talk?”

“Hello, Anakin. Not a great time to talk now, if you can see.”

And Anakin rolls his eyes, because this brand of Kenobi sarcasm is one he is very familiar with.

“Alright, old man, let’s see if you can still keep up.”

(Several months later, Obi-wan storms Palpatine’s residence with Mace Windu and Anakin Skywalker by his side.

Sidious didn’t stand a chance.)

* * *

 

  1. **Leia has short hair, and Ben doesn’t play fast and loose with the truth (at least, some of it)**



“She’s beautiful,” Luke breathes, staring at the blue outlines of a girl dressed all in white, her short, dark hair half-covered by a white cloth.

Ben looks at him sharply. Some things he allows, like the breaking of the non-attachment rule in wartime, but some things should be prevented as much as possible (that’s his _sister_ , for Force’s sake!).

“Much as I appreciate your ogling a girl over listening to the message she brings,” and here Luke jumps a little guiltily, “please don’t set your sights on her. Incest is still frowned upon, even here, which is basically the middle of nowhere.”

Luke’s eyes are impossibly wide, and he rather resembled Orn Free Taa that one time where the assassin droids crashed his extravagant dinner reception.

And oh, _kriff_ , he’s done it now, hasn’t he?

A voice that sounds suspiciously like his old master’s snarkily agrees.

So he sighs (because he’s been holding onto this truth for twenty years, and he apologizes to Yoda but this cannot go on, it’s inane and hiding Luke’s parentage from him won’t help him in any way at this point), and the truth (well, most of it, because the names Padme Amidala and Yoda don’t mean anything on Tatooine) comes out.

When Luke confronts Vader, in the depths of Cloud City, he knows better than to rise to Vader’s taunts, and lets go.

“Goodbye, Father.”

 _Leia_ , he calls. _Leia, please, I’m here, come pick me up._

And though he is badly chilled when the Millenium Falcon does arrive, and shaking from adrenaline and blood loss, he feels alright when his twin picks up a blanket and drapes it around his shoulders, her short hair tickling his ear as she presses a gentle kiss to his cheek.

“Next time it’s my turn.”

* * *

 

  1. **Anakin Skywalker, as a Force ghost, is a terrible prankster**



Sometimes Luke doesn’t know what’s worse: waking up to his hair dyed a bunch of crazy colors, or waking up to his ceiling completely plastered in glow-in-the-dark stars and planets like the ones they sell in the crafts stores.

Definitely the hair, he thinks, as he stumbles into the ‘fresher only to do a double take when the entire right side has the old Rebel Alliance symbol drawn on it.

“Father!”

Old Ben (though really he’s bearded-and-fit Master Kenobi, since “Anakin keeps calling me old man and Qui-gon thinks I should take some breaks from the old hermit aesthetic, that’s all his style is now, never mind the fact he isn’t corporeal”) doesn’t help. He never actively participates, but sometimes Luke catches him smirking out of the corner of his eye, or one memorable time, carting Master Yoda around on his shoulders. Both of them were straight up laughing at him though.

Sometimes he really hates that Force ghosts can influence the world around them simply through sheer willpower.

But young Ben, when he is growing up and Leia is away at the Senate season and Han is getting shot at by space pirates, he is raised by his grandfather, who teaches him not only how to prank his parents and uncle (the three of them silently agree never to speak of the Unicycle Debacle ever again), but to also see beyond the exterior of things (“Ben, do you see that spark in R2? That means he’s sentient, just like you. He just doesn’t look like you.” “Like how Chewie doesn’t look like us but he’s also one of us?” “Exactly.”) and how to be wholly, unapologetically himself. So when the time comes, when Snoke whispers dark, terrible things in his ears, he thinks of the days spent with his grandfather, the two of them in an empty Coruscant apartment, laughing at the latest expression on Uncle Luke’s goofy face – and he says no.

* * *

 

  1. **Padme lives because there is only one the one of him**



He is raised by his father and mother on Coruscant. He has seen the pictures from when he was born, his mother sweaty, tired, and shining, his father proud and beaming, staring down at him, their newly born miracle, and he wonders how things went so terribly, terribly wrong.

His mother grows ever paler and slighter, until she looks like a thin breeze would blow her away. The merest brush of clothing against her neck sends her into shudders that don’t stop until he hugs her tightly. His father’s face is permanently affixed in an angry frown, and his eyes change colors strangely these days. He feels colder, more distant, less Daddy and more Lord Skywalker.

As his father distances himself and his mother wastes away, he feels an aching emptiness, a hole not in his heart but right next to it, like there’s some connection that should exist there but doesn’t, hasn’t, won’t.

He’s six and confused, because Mother hasn’t said a word in days (and he used to love hearing her voice singing the lilting lullabies of her people) and Father hasn’t looked at him for weeks (and he used to love playing with his father’s prosthetic hand, because it’s so weird and cold and unlike anything else he’s seen), and there’s this emptiness in him that is begging to be filled (but with what? Sometimes while he’s asleep he’ll reach his hand out to his side to curl gratefully around another one, but when he awakes his fist is always empty).

When he is nine, Mother dies and lies in state for a day before she is buried. Father takes him to see her, one last time, and Luke runs from the room when the feeling of wrongness overpowers him. Father finds him there hours later, and that is the first time Luke learns of the terrible burden of a parent’s love. Father doesn’t do anything to him, but his icy glare and disapproving frown tell Luke everything he needs to know.

(And beneath it all, the emptiness in his chest yawns wider and wider, until it threatens to swallow him whole…)

* * *

 

  1. **Obi-wan Kenobi runs into a young, hungry boy on Corellia**



The Council has ordered him to Corellia, presumably for a peacekeeping mission, but he knows it is for his health. According to Mace, he’s been overworking himself and needs time away from the battlefield. He thinks it’s a load of bantha shit, but when the other eleven members unite against you, there’s nothing you can do but shrug and agree.

He steps off the ramp and is immediately rammed into by a young miscreant who tries to snatch his purse (which ha, joke’s on the kid: he doesn’t have any credits in there at all). Obi-wan picks the scruffy young boy up by the collar of his shirt and stares at him.

Intelligent blue eyes and an innocent expression plastered on a definitely not innocent face.

“Where are you going, young one?”

“Sir, I weren’t doing no harm, I just wanted –”

“Wanted to take a look at the insides of my purse? Mm.”

The boy’s eyes grow defiant as he realizes this is no simple tourist.

“What do you want? If you don’t let me go, I’ll scream.”

Obi-wan shrugs. CorSec is notorious for not caring about the young orphans left out on the streets, and the boy seems to know this too as he deflates.

“Fine. If you let me go, I’ll owe you a favor, how about that?”

“A kid like you? No need. Here, just go and buy yourself some food, okay?”

“I don’t need your pity!” And he smacks the chits Obi-wan is offering to the ground before running off.

 _If only he were a few years younger_ , Obi-wan thinks. _He could have made a great Jedi_.

* * *

 

  1. **Rey stays on Jakku**



She and BB-8 are walking through the market, and she spots a pretty trinket made of windblown glass and rough twine. She pauses for a moment, admiring the craftsman’s deft work, and she and the droid miss the flash of signature Poe Dameron brown jacket that would have otherwise jumpstarted their adventure.

There’s news a day later about a defected stormtrooper being captured and executed, but Rey doesn’t go because BB-8 is unused to sand in its joints and needs some maintainence.

A few months later, Starkiller Base destroys the Hosnian and Ileenium systems, and whispers of the growing power of the First Order spread to even Jakku. Rey shivers when she hears this and clutches her staff more tightly, as if it can protect her against the might of a star-system destroying superweapon.

BB-8 has long since powered down from a combination of worn joints and overheating. She will miss her little droid buddy, but the desert is harsh and crying is a waste of water.

One day, a ship arrives on the planet, and a single hooded figure climbs out of it. They cock their head, as if hearing something from far away, and start walking.

They end up in front of a ruined AT-AT walker, and at that moment a young woman chooses to stumble out of there.

She sees the hooded figure and stiffens, hands going for her trusty staff, when the figure opens its mouth to speak.

“Hello, Rey.”

* * *

 

There are a hundred retellings of every tale, a thousand mouths passing the stories of old down to millions of ears.

Listen, child.

Here are their stories.

**Author's Note:**

> whoa my own writing speed amazes me


End file.
